Belgacom builds new "green" data center

In August, Belgacom will begin construction on a new data center in Brussels in order to meet the growing customer demand for cloud and data-center services. The new data center will be equipped with the latest technical infrastructure as regards power supply and cooling. It will be operational in the beginning of 2013.

In August 2011, Belgacom will start the construction of a new data center of 2,250 m² in Brussels (Evere). The Belgacom data centers, with a total effective surface area of about 15,000 m², will thus be increased by 15%. The a high-density data center will be built according to the principles of separate air flows, powerful cooling installations and energy-saving solutions, and will therefore be able to accommodate server racks with a higher energy consumption. It will be operational in the beginning of 2013.

Belgacom also improved the energy efficiency of her existing data centers with energy efficiency solutions. These investments allowed Belgacom to sign up to the EU code of conduct for energy efficiency in data centers (the first company in Belgium to sign) in September 2010.

Growing demand for data-center and cloud services

The new data center that Belgacom is building in Brussels will meet the growing demand of companies for data center- and cloud services.

Belgacom's offer of data center- and cloud services is a hybrid offer which can be adapted to the customer's needs. Indeed, Belgacom offers companies both private cloud and public cloud solutions, and all the combinations in-between. Belgacom's cloud offer is mainly based on services such as IaaS, a virtual server and storage. In addition, Belgacom of course offers collaboration solutions (mail, content management) and continues to invest in unified communication. Belgacom is also active in the field of virtual desktops and streaming, and will make additional investments in other fields.

The new data center will be exclusively reserved for high-density IT systems, blade servers and other virtualized IT environments. Belgacom will use one part of the data center to accommodate the IT equipment of its cloud services, and will set up another part as a high-density housing environment for its business customers.

Operational reliability

The new data center will comply with ISO 27001 classification Tier-III +, just like the other Belgacom data centers. This means that the data centers will guarantee an uptime of 99.99%. This high level of operational reliability is achieved thanks to a fully redundant power supply supported by dynamic backup generators and a cooling system with buffer capacity.

A revolutionary, green cooling technique

To cool the high-density server rooms, Belgacom will use the most environmentally friendly technique. A sophisticated air-to-air heat exchanger will cool the ambient air of the computer rooms with outside air. Given the average climatic conditions of Belgium, classical mechanical cooling will only have to be used 3% of the total time.

Power usage of the support systems reduced by 60%

Cooling represents more than two-thirds of the energy demand in a data center's support systems (cooling, security systems,...). By choosing the technique of directional cooling with outside air, this part of the energy demand can be reduced by more than 60%.

Power

The server rooms of the new data center will have a total effective power of 2 megawatt, with an average load per computer rack of 5.6 kilowatt and a peak load up to 8 kilowatt.